Edit Points: Curved and Straight Line Segments in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Learn about Curved and Straight line segments in PowerPoint 2011.

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: Microsoft PowerPoint 2011 OS: Mac OS X

Date Created: February 8th 2012Last Updated: February 8th 2012

A line (outline) in PowerPoint contains both points and segments. You already
learned about the three types of points in PowerPoint 2011 in a previous tutorial.
Now we are going to show you how to work with segments, the lines that connect one point and another. There are two types of segments: straight and curved. You can edit these
segments and also convert a straight segment to a curved segment and vice
versa, as you will learn in this tutorial.

Curved Segment

To change a straight segment into a curved segment, follow these steps:

Select the shape which has straight segments (such as a square, as shown in Figure 1) and switch to Edit Points mode (just right-click the shape, and choose the Edit Points option in the resultant contextual menu). Place the cursor on top of the shape’s outline so that it is placed above a segment rather than a point. The cursor
will change to a square with a plus sign, as shown in Figure
1 (highlighted in red).

Figure 1: Cursor placed on the segment of the square

Right-click to get the contextual menu - from this menu, choose the Curved Segment option as shown in Figure
2.

Figure 2: Curved Segment option selected

This converts the straight segment of the square to a curved segment,
as shown in Figure 3 (compare with Figure
1).

Figure 3: Straight segment changed to Curved segment

Straight Segment

To change a curved segment into a straight segment, follow these steps:

Select the shape which has curved segments (such as a circle, as shown in Figure 4) and switch to Edit Points mode (just right-click the shape and choose the Edit Points option). Place the cursor on top of the outline of the shape - the cursor
will change to a square with a plus sign, as shown in Figure
4 (highlighted in red).

Figure 4: Cursor placed on the outline of the circle

Right-click to get the contextual menu - from this menu, choose the Straight Segment option as shown in Figure
5.

Figure 5: Straight Segment option selected

This converts the curved segment of the circle into a straight segment,
as shown in Figure 6 (compare to Figure 4).

Figure 6: Curved segment changed to Straight
segment

Directly Working with Segments

You can also click anywhere on a segment and drag it as required to change
the structure of the shape. PowerPoint automatically adds a new point (vertex) at the point where you clicked and dragged the segment, as shown in Figure 7 (compare to Figure 4).

Figure 7: New point added on the segment at the clicked and dragged position